Thursday, January 17, 2013

Mosses

Today's Guardian Country Diary focuses on mosses, which continue to grow in winter - even when most of the other vegetation in the countryside is dormant. This is really their season, when there's plenty of water, little shading from taller plants or woodland leaf canopies and when - on milder days - they can make rapid growth. With little else in the plant world to explore at the moment, this is a good time to appreciate these durable little plants which were amongst the first to colonise the land surface and have survived as a group for half a billion years.These are a few species from my neck of the woods....

Pseudoscleropodium purum, Neat Feather-moss, grows in grassland and has stout shoots that look as though they've been inflated.

Sphagnum sp., Bog moss, which forms peat bogs

Syntrichia ruralis subsp. ruraliformis, Sand-hill Screw-moss, forms extensive mats on the surface of sand dunes between Warkworth and Alnmouth on the Northumberland coast.The Mosses and Liverworts of Britain and Ireland: a Field Guide, published by the British Bryological Society is an excellent guide to identifying our moss flora.For more mosses, click here

Cabinet of Curiosities

Welcome to my natural history blog from the North East of England.

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